Wednesday, April 28, 2010

I keep bringing up this global warming thing only because I keep noticing that facts are becoming less and less important. I'm a fan of facts, especially the true kind--call me old-fashioned--but I certainly do not want to give the impression that having facts makes me a better person. It doesn't. Righter, maybe. Here's the thing: if a grizzly is bearing down on you, he's not going to freeze and twitch his nose at you just because you call him a bunny.

And it matters how many people can tell a grizzly from a bunny, because the sorts of things that might mitigate the worst effects of global warming require a lot of political will. People have to get behind the effort. There was starting to be some movement in the right direction, conventions convened and proposals proposed, and then it got all snowy and icky in Washington and they called the whole thing off.

One of the factors affecting people's perceptions of the threat is that although climate scientists overwhelmingly believe the planet is warming due to human actions, a significant percentage of meteorologists ain't so dang sure. And that's who the people are listening to. People love their local weather people, most of whom are totally adorable. Oddly, when the same people need gall bladder surgery, they still tend to go to a surgeon rather than a meatpacker, who also knows a thing or two about anatomy. Climate scientists, however, are dismissed. They are suspected of being snooty and no fun at parties.

As for why meteorologists are not signing on to the warming threat, well, there's a certain amount of professional jealousy involved. Climate scientists get big funding to go drill holes in the Greenland ice sheet, and weather forecasters get sent out in hurricanes to be lashed to lightposts and bawl into their mikes. When you're soaked to the skin, you're not inclined to think warmly about a bunch of overpaid blowhards. Or their iceholes.

Furthermore, professionals who can't predict weather seven days out are inclined to be resentful of other professionals who are flinging out predictions for the rest of the century. They would have a point if climate scientists were suggesting it will be 89 degrees in Philadelphia on March 31st, 2050, with evening thundershowers, but they're not.

The fact is, climatologists are nearly always affiliated with universities and hold doctoral degrees, whereas weather people can get by with a bachelor's in meteorology, or even just big teeth and the ability to point out a cloud icon on a map.

Unfortunately, the random snarky Al Gore comments uttered by the NewsWatch weatherman during a snowstorm are taken more to heart by the general population than sober warnings by the Smartypants Institute. A lot of people are just more comfortable with Vanna White than Marie Curie. Partisans on both sides of the issue have taken note of this and are making attempts to corral the legions of weather forecasters into their respective camps. The Union Of Concerned Scientists, Yale, and the National Environmental Education Foundation all have held forums to educate meteorological-Americans, but their efforts are being undermined by the Heartland Institute. This conservative free-market policy think tank is also reaching out to weather forecasters at their annual conference. It could well be that the fate of the planet will rest on the outcome of dueling cheese dips and gift bags.

[In other news on the fact front, the Texas Board of Education has released a new study proving that the rock strata in Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota can conclusively be dated from 1776 to 1919.]

Science Friday did a piece on this a few weeks ago. When the head meteorologist at CNN, the head meteorologist at AccuWeather, and the founder of the Weather Channel recant their unfounded claims that warming isn't happening, we'll have a major catalyst for progress. If these yahoos knew that the majority of Americans DO understand that warming is happening, would they then change their tune?http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/201004092

Thanks for voicing my opinion for me. I'm gonna share this on Facebook so that my Georgia friends who post stupid things like, "It's 14 degrees outside, evidence that there is no such thing as global warning." can read something intelligent for a change.

Here in the DC area we are regularly subjected to the blowhards of Congress spouting off about climate change. During the three, yes, three blizzards we had this winter the doubters were absolutely gleeful about the weather and the "proof" that warnings about global warming was nothing more than chicken littlism. The Climate scientists then tried to rebuke with their report that was actually written years ago saying that they PREDICTED these major snowstorms because of global warming. How? Because the temps in the DC area were not really colder than normal, but the storms carried more moisture and were more violent BECAUSE of the warmer ocean temps. But, you never heard about that...

I must say though that growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, I LOVED our weatherman. Barry Zevan the weatherman!! I even sent him a fan letter when I was in grade school and he wrote me back. Still have the letter.

I'm not commenting on the in's and out's of GW and the ramifications thereof. BUT there is some confusion in your post and in one of the comments about meteorology. A weather forecaster is NOT a meteorologist. He/she is a technician, and trained to interpret weather data and satellite images to make a prediction for tomorrow's weather. The training is at bachelor degree level or less. The media call these people meteorologists. They are not. Television presenters do not even have this training. They are only reading a forecast given to them. Weather forecasters seldom make comments about GW. A meteorologist IS a climate scientist. And has a doctoral level degree. A meteorologist may specialise in atmospheric physics or have an interest in sea temperatures for example. The media refer to these people as climate scientists. Every meteorology service in every country that has a Met Office has both forecasters and meteorologists (climate scientists). Some meteorologists also work for other scientific establishments as well, or in universities, where they style themselves differently, and may well for example, call themselves climate scientists or some such because it's trendy to do so. I'm not taking issue with anyone here, just pointing out a common misconception. I have worked for the Meteorological Service (not as a scientist), my eldest daughter IS a scientist with a doctorate. She is a meteorologist. She is also a geophysicist.

Rebel, maybe your Georgia friends will understand the term "Global Climate Change." Warming, yes, is the dominant trend (a significant amount for ocean behavior, plants, and animals, including us and our already-fragile economy), but cooling other places, and more and more of just plain crazy in a lot of places. Speaking of frogs, this Friday, April 30, is Save the Frogs Day. Wear green and check out savethefrogs.com to see what you can do toward that end (including happy-frog habitat in your yard). Creative folks (all of you?), see their contest for amphibious essays, art, and poems to raise consciousness about these swamp canaries and their impending extinctions.

My father-in-law is a retired Horticulture prof from OSU. He learned back in the 1070's that the warming trend happening now was predicted... at which time the climate will cool and we will move into an ice age. He checks the bloom dates of several flowering plants in town every year and tabulates the results. His "observations" bear out his expectations.

We go round an round about the probability of Global Climate Change... I say that, even though the Greenland ice cores support his hypothesis, the fly in the ointment is the HUGE increase of Anthropogenic effects on climate.

Somebody is wrong here... but we don't need to duke it out - just wait and sooner or later it will be blatantly obvious who was right.

One mildly hopeful thing for the future: they teach kids probability as part of basic math, nowadays. It wasn't even on the curriculum in my high school. I think a lot of global warming skeptics are just pig-ignorant about how to reckon up odds and how certain you can be about uncertainties, in the long run.

Though it's still terribly frustrating how incapable of evaluating sources people are. Harvard University is one thing, and a "think tank," which is usually a few unqualified people working for a couple extremely rich families because they reliably say what the families want them to say, is another thing entirely. You see it all the time, journalists quoting something like Cato or American Heritage as anyone had any reason to listen to them. It's like quoting your Uncle Fred.

Ah I recognise him, that's the deliciously camp BBC weather person Daniel Corbett. And obviously there are so many clouds on his map, how can there possibly be global warming? They'll be saying the skies are full of volcanic ash next.

My father-in-law is a retired Horticulture prof from OSU. He learned back in the 1070's that the warming trend happening now was predicted... at which time the climate will cool and we will move into an ice age. He checks the bloom dates of several flowering plants in town every year and tabulates the results. His "observations" bear out his expectations.

We go round an round about the probability of Global Climate Change... I say that, even though the Greenland ice cores support his hypothesis, the fly in the ointment is the HUGE increase of Anthropogenic effects on climate.

Somebody is wrong here... but we don't need to duke it out - just wait and sooner or later it will be blatantly obvious who was right.